A Special Ingredient for Every Meal
Mealtime and cooking is often fraught with anxiety and fear for those who struggle with their weight. If this applies to you, transform your eating habits and your relationship with food by creating new memories and positive associations. Here's a special recipe to show you how.
Old Memories
Whether positive or negative, longstanding attitudes and reactions to food and mealtime often originate from childhood. If you're someone who eats for emotional reasons, and has an ongoing problem with your weight, associations to food, cooking, mealtime and kitchens may be complicated and perhaps layered with guilt and fear.
For example, you may have painful childhood memories of being shamed at the dinner table, or of hiding food and binge eating alone in your bedroom. Or, perhaps it was as an adult when you began to use food to calm anxiety or soothe sadness and this may contribute to weight issues today.
A Special Recipe
To help you move past painful associations and create new, positive memories, I'd like to share with you this lovely story recently told to me by a dear friend:
"A young child grew up watching her mother prepare their family meals. At the end of food preparation she noticed her mother, Anna, would always reach over the stove and bring down a beautifully carved old box. Anna would open the box, take a pinch of the ingredient and add this to the food. The young child asked her mother, "What is in the box?" Anna would always reply, "An old family recipe - a family secret."
The young child watched her mother repeat this ritual many times over the years. When the young child was grown with a daughter of her own, she was given the carved box upon her mother's death. She, too, performed the daily ritual of Anna's box, and told her young daughter, "It's a family secret." The young daughter was very curious about the contents of this magical box and could hardly wait to find out its mysterious secrets. The years passed and she forgot about the special box.
When her mother passed on many years later, she inherited the carved box. She was so excited to finally receive this gift and discover its hidden secrets. Holding it gently, she slowly opened the beautifully carved box only to find it empty. Surprised at first, she then smiled and lovingly closed the lid. She now realized that the box did contain a special recipe. It was a recipe for the love a person has for her family - a reminder to cook with love. It was the intention and action of looking into the box and remembering to add a pinch of love to every dish prepared that created the magic of Anna's box."
Create Your Own "Anna's Box"
When we bless our food with love, we neutralize negative associations. When we make our kitchens a sacred space, we bring an energy of calm and peacefulness to what previously may have been fraught with ambivalence and inner chaos.
Find a beautiful container to symbolically hold love and gratitude. Keep it in a special place in your kitchen. Offer love and gratitude to each meal you make and to everything you eat.
When away from home, offer love and gratitude to your food. Whether you are eating a snack or a full meal, eating to manage anxiety or calmly enjoying dinner, home alone or at a restaurant with friends, with no judgment, simply mentally project the energy of love to your food.
As simple as this may sound, taking a moment to add the sacred and special ingredient of love and gratitude to your food will help your weight release journey flow more smoothly. Anxiety and fear always transform into peace and calm when enveloped in the power of love.
Your thoughts...
How will creating your own "Anna's Box" help you in your weight release journey?
Diane Petrella, MSW is a psychotherapist and life coach. She offers her clients a spiritual approach to weight release and helps them develop a loving, respectful relationship with their bodies. Receive a free copy of Diane’s Seven Easy & Effortless Weight Loss Secrets by signing up for her monthly e-newsletter, Living Lightly, for spiritual insights and tips to release weight with confidence and love. To contact Diane directly visit her website at www.dianepetrella.com.
Comments
Yea my Mom would do this too, only she added a little bacon grease to everything.
Ok...I am laughing! Thanks for the reminder about bacon grease! That was my Mom's love potion too!
Is this not similar to saying a prayer before a meal, where you stop to think about being thankful for the food and appreciating it. It's a lovely thing to do.
Great article, hits the nail right on the head with so many. I have had inner turmoil with food for years and I'm sure if most who were obese/anorexic looked inward, would realize the same.
Great article, losing weight and maintaining it is all about re-building a healthy relationship with food. What a lovely idea, I will try it!
This is a wonderful idea! I am going to start adding that special ingredient immediately!
I agree....this was a lovely story. We forget how fortunate we are to have food on our table everyday. Our anxiety about ourselves and our food pales in comparison to all of the starving souls throughout our Mother earth. We need to be so much more thankful....and I am thankful for this story and the love brought with it.
Original Post by: charlenesledgeOk...I am laughing! Thanks for the reminder about bacon grease! That was my Mom's love potion too!
I was about to type "bacon" when I saw your posts! Hehe... Bacon makes everything better (as long as one has worked out appropriately before/after eating).
Yes, bacon tastes better on everything. My mom did this too. I begin to look for a special box and also say grace before meals. I have been planning to do this, but still haven't done it consistently. I was brought up say grace and blessing the food, but got away from it.
I have the perfect little salt & pepper shakers that I am going to use. One for love & one for gratitude! Love this idea!
Thank you everyone for your comments!
This story so moved me that I was eager to share it with all of you here on Calorie Count. I'm so glad my article, and the idea of creating your own "Anna's Box", resonates with you. The intention of sending love and gratitude to our food is very powerful. As lynnettekern, I too have a pair of salt and pepper shakers that serve this purpose for me. May the story of Anna's Box inspire all of you to add love and gratitude to your weight release journey.
Peace and happiness to all~
Warmly,
Diane
This is a touching and, maybe even a bit adorable, idea. Having said that, I don't feel the need to be so literal in my own life. I love to cook and I already use cooking in particular as an expression of caring and love. When I share food I've made with someone, or make something for them, it is a quite deliberate act of love, compassion, or affection.
I think I would feel this way anyway, because of the years I spent enjoying my Mother's cooking, which always felt like she had made it with me in mind, and all the years I cooked by her side. However, the act of cooking with love became even more accentuated in my life when my sister passed away a few years ago. Many, if not most, of the 'comforting' words people had to say were anything but, at least from my point of view. Some people said, 'let me know if there is anything I can do.' But what was most helpful, and most comforting, was the people who just did something to try to help on the off chance that you needed it. This usually came in the form of homemade dishes, delivered to our door, with the loving, no pressure sentiment of 'eat it if you like, or throw it away if you don't.' Since then, when I want to make someone feel better, I usually show up with food.
Let me just add that I was lucky to have so many people that cared, regardless of how effective I found them to be at comforting myself and my family in our loss. In that situation, truly there is little comfort to be found, but hopefully you can understand the point I tried to make above.
Thank you SO much for the lovely story. I am one of those people who found dinner times as a child, a time full of anxiety and fear. Later, as a single parent raising 3 children, it was practically impossible to "relax". Meals generally ended in some sort of argument. (Your artical makes me think that most likely I carried my own "childhood" issues to table. Thank you for giving me another "take" on those days).
The idea you present, so simple and sweet; adding the all important ingredients of love and gratitude to each meal, resonates powerfully with me. And I thank you again.
I, too, have a singular salt shaker, part of a set long split, I intend to "fill" it today. I am thinking of sending my children "containers" as well, as I am always looking for some way to bring my family together.
godzilli, I took the msg as more of a reminder to myself to love myself more. Of course I love my family, but sometimes forget about myself... I think when I get in a habit of thinking about love & gratitue toward myself by "pretending" to sprinkle it on my food will remind me to stay healthy & that I love myself too much to put things in my body that are not good for me. Im so sorry for the loss of your sister! God bless!! and remember to love yourself!!
my mom was a great cook she would add a little of this and a little of that and I will bet she probably did the box thing in her own special way! :> At 55 I am still learning to cook...my hubbie is the cook and I am the prep chef. He is always coming up with some great meal that is good for you too...I will have to say when i'm chopping up those herbs and adding them to the food it is my special love ingredients going into the meal. I love the article and I am going to find an "Anna's Box" for my daughter to use! Thanks for sharing!! 
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This is actually one of the most poignant readings in recent past from Calorie Count. We all get so caught up in the physicality of the world, and especially in our goals to be healthy. Often, we forget (or forgo) the concept that we are spiritual beings before all else.
Adding "love" to a meal, whether it is for ourselves or others is a simple way to re-engage ourselves in the simplicity of our body-mind-spirit connection. Positive energy through thought and motion can add a lot to our days and our health.
Thank you!